Re: Estrogen - what gives?

[Guest guest]

I don't know the answer to your question, but I do wonder whether my

fibroid situation had an effect on the results of my AFP

(alpha-fetoprotein) test when I was pregnant (I had a 6 cm fibroid when I

got pregnant, and it grew to 13 cm during the pregnancy). An AFP test

measures the amount of alpha-fetoprotein, hCG, and estriol in the mother's

blood. If the amounts are too low, Down's syndrome is suspected. If the

amounts are too high, the baby could have a neural tube disorder. AFP tests

are notorious for providing false positives, so they have a history of

making many couples anxious unnecessarily. That's what happened in our

case; the AFP indicated that there was a 1 in 30 chance that our baby had

Down's syndrome (the average for women my age is 1 in 300). Fortunately,

the subsequent amniocentesis showed that there were no chromosomal

abnormalities, and our daughter did not have any birth defects when she was

born.

The thing about AFP tests is that they must be given at exactly the right

point in a woman's cycle, or else her hormone levels won't be in line with

the expected test results. I knew exactly when my last pre-pregnancy

menstrual cycle started, so we knew we were taking the AFP test at the

right point in the cycle. I do wonder whether some sort of fibroid-related

wacky hormone situation threw off the test. Or it could just be that the

AFP test is just too unreliable overall. If I have another baby, I will not

have an AFP test.

Cheryl

At 03:35 AM 1/4/2004 +0000, you wrote:

>I just wonder is it estradiol that is causing estrogen dominance/fibroid

>growth or some other estrogens or combination of hormones -- and are

>these dependent on whether the woman is pregnant, menopausal, or just

>hormonally off-kilter.